Abuse Case Sheds Light On Dcfs Ills

November 24, 1994|By Susan Kuczka, Tribune Staff Writer.

Last year's Thanksgiving Day disclosure about an emaciated 5-year-old boy who had allegedly been starved and tortured by his mother and her live-in boyfriend continues to rankle the sensibilities of child-care workers across the state.

Two workers from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services who had visited the boy's mother before she took him to a Chicago hospital in a near-death condition were subsequently fired for failing to remove the child from the boy's mother.

Social service workers seeking improvements at DCFS have pointed to the case in the months since, as an example of what can go wrong when when workers in the state's child-welfare agency fail to do their jobs properly.

And publicity about the boy's case and others, including the discovery of 19 children living in squalor on Chicago's West Side last February, led to an explosion of hot-line calls to DCFS, which took custody of a record number of children this year.

Those developments were probably of less than primary concern, however, to the doctors, nurses and social service workers who for the past year have tended to the needs of the 5-year-old boy whose condition stunned even the most senior child-care workers.

And it is largely a result of their care that the boy, now 6, weighs a healthy 31 1/2 pounds and has grown 3 inches to 40 1/2 inches tall.

The boy, who was hospitalized for about seven months, also was recently enrolled in kindergarten classes in a school near the Oak Park group home where he lives, Hamilton said.

He also has had several visits with his three siblings, who also were taken into the custody of the DCFS when the boy's condition was reported to authorities by officials at St. Bernard Hospital last Nov. 25.

Although the boy has required special medical attention since being discharged from hospital care last June, DCFS officials are hopeful a foster-care placement will be located for him in the near future, Hamilton said.

In the meantime, the custody case involving the boy's mother, Aretha McKinney, 26, formerly of the 6100 block of South Michigan Avenue, is pending in Cook County Juvenile Court.

Authorities said that proceedings could move along more rapidly after McKinney's sentencing in Criminal Court earlier this month to seven years in prison after she pleaded guilty to aggravated battery of a child and cruelty to her child.

Her live-in boyfriend, Eddie Lee Robinson, 34, is awaiting trial on charges of aggravated battery to a child, aggravated battery and cruelty to a child. He is free on $10,000 bond.